Susan Talks Reviews

I have a pretty healthy ego when it comes to reviews. Love my books and I deem you the most brilliant reader in the world. Trash them and I question your intelligence, because obviously you didn’t get it. I've long since given up Googling myself, because frankly I'd just as soon not know if I've been given a crummy review at one of those slice-and-dice romance sites. Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.
But that made me think about the preponderance of mean-spirited reviews. Is it just me, or do there seem to be more and more of those these days? I'm not talking about not liking a book--I think a reader either clicks with an author's story telling style or she doesn't. (And while my ego may be healthy, it's not megalomaniacal) I know not everyone is going to love my work. In fact, one of my favorite reviews is on Amazon for I can't remember which book. A couple readers thought it was a big step backward from their favorite work of mine and someone else set them straight. No, no, she wrote. Book A isn't her worst book, Book C is!" Cracked me up. That's kind of the "When they said you weren't fit to sleep with the pigs I said Yes You Were!" defense.
Still, there seems to be more and more reviews out there that are just plain malicious. Is it the anonymity of the internet that brings out the nastiness in some people, do you think? Or the fact that controversy is simply more entertaining?
In the end a reviewer can be as vicious as she pleases and I doubt it has an adverse affect on sales. I haven’t seen where good reviews make a difference. Out of fourteen published books I’ve had two of them garner starred reviews in Publisher Weekly. Neither of those books were my top sellers and, in fact, one saw a dip in the sales from the book preceding it. Conversely, a friend who once had one of her books at the center of a truly nasty (and if you ask me, libelous) campaign said it was one of her best sellers yet. So I don’t know, girls and boys.
Maybe I oughtta manufacture myself a nice juicy controversy. (g)
So what do you guys think? IS it simply my imagination that there are more mean-spirited reviews? And how much does a review, whether positive or negative, affect your own book buying decisions?


















